Artificial Intelligence for Development

Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) partners with AI researchers, innovators and policymakers to support homegrown, responsible AI applications and policies.

The challenge

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are rapidly becoming a new layer of infrastructure, with transformative potential. Yet, as with any widely adopted technology — especially one as powerful and potentially pervasive as AI —, the benefits come with risks that must be managed and mitigated. AI can reinforce structural inequalities and bias, perpetuate gender imbalances, threaten jobs and facilitate oppressive government surveillance. That is why IDRC supports research in the Global South around the concept of responsible AI: the practice of designing, developing and deploying AI systems that are safe, inclusive, rights-based and sustainable. 

The vision: A responsible AI ecosystem

The vision of the AI4D program is to support a responsible AI ecosystem where local experts are enabled to solve their own development challenges with inclusive responsible AI applications and policies. AI4D is also supporting and advancing Southern leadership in local and global governance decisions, debates and innovation fora. 

AI4D Africa (2020–2025)

The vision goes back to 2020, when IDRC and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency launched the Artificial Intelligence for Development in Africa (AI4D Africa) program. That five-year, CAD20-million partnership set the foundations for a responsible AI ecosystem in Africa, supporting one French-language and two English-language responsible AI policy research hubs, funding the establishment of three multidisciplinary AI laboratories at public universities and spurring the development of nearly 100 locally led innovations. 

AI4D beyond Africa (2025-2029)

The SafeHer: A Women Mobility and Empowerment App Prototype

IDRC / David Hogsholt, Panos Pictures

In 2024, IDRC partnered with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to launch the AI4D: Responsible AI, Empowering People program. This program, with an investment of more than CAD100 million, will continue building on the work of AI4D Africa. It will also coordinate IDRC’s AI programming in Africa with work that the Centre supports in Latin America and the Middle East, such as the Global Index on Responsible AI, the Feminist AI Research (FAIR) Network and the AI for Global Health initiative, to maximize the potential for impact. The program will also expand the geographic focus of AI4D to low- and lower-middle-income countries in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific region.

Program structure

At its core, AI4D seeks to contribute to two critical outcomes:

Shaping policy: Establishing responsible AI policies and regulations that minimize harm and promote inclusivity, ethics, sustainability and human rights.
Scaling innovation: Supporting and expanding impactful AI applications that address key development challenges, such as gender inequality and environmental sustainability.

Specifically, AI4D focuses on four pillars:

Strengthening AI ecosystem fundamentals through two umbrella activities: fostering academic talent and skills around AI through the development of multidisciplinary AI4D university labs, and supporting and debiasing the AI data ecosystem through the creation of locally relevant datasets, which are then made accessible for sustainable use.
Supporting policy research think-and-do tanks to establish responsible AI by funding sub-regional policy think-and-do tanks as well as responsible regional AI observatories.
Supporting AI solutions that address critical development challenges in priority sectors such as health, gender equality, education, climate change adaptation and agriculture through the innovation research networks and support to small-grant programs.
Appropriately scaling responsible AI innovations that have a demonstrated development impact in priority sectors.

The vision depicted in the above infographic is a high-level framework for AI4D, developed in collaboration with FCDO.

IDRC

The AI4D Funders Collaborative

IDRC and FCDO are convening the AI4D Funders Collaborative that is uniting with partners around the world to centre challenges in the Global South and combat technological and social inequality by supporting inclusive, responsible AI made by and for communities. This global partnership includes IDRC, FCDO, Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Gates Foundation, working together to coordinate programming around a shared set of thematic and sectoral challenges within the AI space.

To learn more, visit the AI4D and the AI4D Funders Collaborative website.